Friedl put together a productive campaign for fantasy owners in 2023 and while his speed is legit, he makes very little hard contact and his season line benefited from a fluky month in which he slugged 7 homers thanks to an inflated 32% HR/FB.
.jpg)
TJ Friedl seemingly came out of nowhere to make an impact in the majors in 2023. That was partly because he did. The Reds signed the now-28 year-old was as an undrafted free agent out of the University of Nevada-Reno in 2016. He was partly available because most clubs apparently didn’t realize he was eligible for the draft, which was something that he himself didn’t realize until about a week before it occurred. The Reds, though thought highly of Friedl – who had batted .401 and logged a .494 OBP in his third collegiate campaign – as the organization offered him a $732,500 bonus, the most ever given to a player bypassed in the draft. He further made an impression as he hit .290 in a month of action with Team USA baseball in 2016.
Despite being a college bat, Friedl didn’t reach the majors until 2021. In many ways, his minor-league career was remarkably consistent in several areas as he showed an ability to draw walks, make a good bit of contact, and swipe some bags without offering much in the way of power. He did, however, seem to turn something of a corner in 2021, when he hit .264 with 12 dingers, 36 RBI, 59 runs scored, and 13 steals (albeit in 20 attempts) with a wRC+ of 111 across 448 plate appearances with Triple-A Louisville. It was the first minor-league season in which he hit more than 7 longballs. A 15% strikeout rate and 10% walk rate attested to his command of the plate, although Friedl was admittedly mature for the level of competition at 25.
Friedl got his first taste of big-league action in 2021. In very limited action, he hit .290 with a homer, 2 RBI, 9 runs scored, and a wRC+ of 106 across just 36 PA; encouragingly, he fanned (6%) less often than he walked (11%), but, again, it was a tiny sample size. Even though he had spent almost a full season in Triple-A, Friedl began the 2022 campaign at that level. This time, he batted .278 with 8 dingers, 38 RBI, 33 runs scored, and 10 stolen bases (in 12 chances) across 241 PA, with a wRC+ of 124; he continued to keep the strikeout rate reasonable (20%) while drawing plenty of free passes (12%).
With him showing that he had little left to prove in the minors, the Reds promoted Friedl to the majors. This time, he hit .240 with 8 homers, 25 RBI, 33 RBI, and 7 steals (in 9 tries), with a wRC+ of 103 across 258 PA. Although his walk rate was pretty average at 8%, Friedl didn’t strike out a lot (16%). His contact rate was average (81%), but his hard-hit rate was below-average at 29%. He didn’t rip many liners (18%) and tended to loft a lot of flyballs (50%), which isn’t ideal for a guy with a low hard-hit rate. In fact, with his plus speed he’d have been better off hitting more grounders, but his average launch angle (19.8) meant lots of balls in the air.
Friedl broke camp with the Reds in 2023 and remained with the club for the duration of his age-27 season. He put together his best professional campaign to date, batting .279 with 18 homers, 66 RBI, 73 runs scored, and 27 stolen bases (in 33 attempts) across 556 PA, with a wRC+ of 116 attesting to his productivity. His strikeout rate remained steady at 16% while his walk rate came in at 8.5%, with better-than-average marks in contact rate (83%) and swinging-strike rate (just 7%). He showed strong discipline at the plate as his swing rate was just 41% and he chased pitches outside the zone at a below-average 28% rate. Although he raised his liner rate to 20%, lowered his flyball rate to 42%, and raised his groundball rate to 39% thanks to an average launch angle of 16.1, Friedl’s hard-hit rate dipped significantly to 25%. His barrel rate, meanwhile, dipped from an already-low 5% to just 3%.
His 2023 season was also a bit uneven as he did slow down a bit after the All-Star break. In 240 PA before the break, he hit .304 with 6 homers, 32 RBI, 34 runs scored, and 16 stolen bases, with a wRC+ of 124. In 248 PA after the break, he batted .254 with 12 dingers, 34 RBI, 39 runs scored, and 11 steals, with a wRC+ of 109. Although his strikeout rate did dip from 17% to 15% from the first half to the second half, his walk rate also did, from over 9% to 7.5%. Encouragingly, though, his hard-hit rate ticked upward from a putrid 21% before the break to 29% afterward.
Most of his second-half productivity came in September, as Friedl hit .333 with 7 homers, 18 RBI, 18 runs scored, and 3 steals across 102 PA down the stretch, with a robust wRC+ of 124. He walked (15%) nearly as often as he fanned (16%) that month while posting a season-high 35% hard-hit rate. The power output benefited from a 32% HR/FB that dwarfed his second-highest HR/FB in a month (12% in June) and is clearly unsustainable.
Ultimately, it’s tough to get too excited about Friedl in fantasy going forward because of his unimpressive hard-hit rate. He’s a nice player who should offer a solid (but not great) average and some steals thanks to his plus speed, but it’s questionable as to whether he can again hit 15-plus homers. For the right price on draft day, he’s a solid 3rd OF or bench bat for fantasy depending on the size of the league.
Photo credit: Jeffrey Hayes, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Comments
Post a Comment